How Long Does a Building Survey Take?

Is a question often asked of us, and the answer is… it depends! It depends on the size of the house, the age of the property, the type manner of construction, the extent of the defects we may find, the extent of furnishings and carpets, whether it’s raining and we have to keep nipping in and out between showers and whether the vendor makes us a cup of tea or not!

But… if we assume a normal three bedroom semi detached house, on a nice day and typically furnished and with no particularly awkward defects we would expect to spend around two and a half to three hours on a survey. On the other hand a five bedroom grade 2 listed country property in dilapidated order may well take six or more hours and a recently built one bedroom starter home may only take an hour and half.

A Level 2 HomeBuyer Report needs less inspection time and we would expect to spend about an hour and a half on a three bed semi, an hour on the starter home and no time at all on the listed chunk of country estate because the homebuyer is not a suitable product for a property of that type.

We help residential and commercial property owners buy, maintain, improve and manage their buildings. We work with private individuals, local authorities, health services, police forces, managing agents and commercial property investors and owners.